Month: April 2017

Yesterday I mentored a woman who wanted to become a keynote speaker. She was feeling insecure about her potential to make it as a speaker and told me: “Fredrik, why should anyone want to hear my story.”

I told her: “No one wants to hear your story.”

That was not an attack as her as a person, it was a general statement about how most people do not care about other peoples stories.

Unless, you are famous or have done something amazing.

But even IF you are famous or have done something amazing (which is common for people who become speakers) I STILL believe that as a speaker you should not tell your story.

Because there is one thing people care much more about than your story – and that is: What they can learn from your struggles.

I think the minority of a speech should be a persons “story” – the rest should be content based around what you learnt from your struggles and not just packaged around your own life – but exemplified with a lot of stories and examples from OTHER peoples lives, other peoples struggles.

Because when you can take the lesson from you own life and turn it into a human, generic lesson then you will have a much better understanding of the lesson – and people will have a much easier way of connecting with your message.

Remember, a speech is never about YOU – it’s about the message to the audience. And if your whole speech is about you, getting the message across might be more difficult than if you are able to take your story and distill the lesson from it and take that lesson and apply it on other people, other situations, other stories.

Every speaker has a story to tell. But it is seldom that that story is best communicated by telling the story of your story.

Bad Day At Work – Or Why I Am Not A Pilot

Whoever tells you being a global speaker just means a lot of time on airplanes is missing the point.

ABOUT THIS SITE

ProfessionalSpeaking.com is run by Fredrik Haren, a Keynote Speaker whose specialty is to speak at Global and International Conferences around the world.

Through this site, he wants to inspire others to learn more about the job of being a professional speaker by sharing his thoughts on what it means to work as a global, professional speaker.

Fredrik has been speaking professionally for more than 20 years. He has been invited to speak in over 60 countries on 5 continents, and just in the last 12 months, he spoke in 32 different countries. He is a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), as well as one of less than 40 CSP Global in the world. He was awarded "Speaker of the Year" in Sweden and selected as one of the "Top 10 Swedish Speakers Ever". He now lives in Singapore.

As an author for over 20 years, Fredrik has written 9 books which have been translated to more than 15 languages and sold in over 60 countries. His book, The Idea Book, was included in "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.”

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